Sony overtakes Nintendo in hardware sales

Oliver Smith is a senior reporter at The Memo, an online publication curious about the future of technology. He was formerly a reporter at City A.M.

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SONY has overtaken Nintendo in the number of video games consoles sold last year for the first time since 2005.

Nintendo sold 16.3m consoles during the year ending March, down 31 per cent year-on-year, while Sony – buoyed by the launch of its fast-selling PlayStation 4 – sold 18.7m consoles during the year, down 20 per cent.

Microsoft, meanwhile, saw its unit sales rise 16 per cent during the year to 11.6m consoles, helped by the launch of the Xbox One in November.

The figures, from Japan's Nikkei business news site, show an overall decline in the video games console market as smartphones continue to take ground from them.

Last month Nintendo reported its Wii U console had missed projections due to a paucity of games for the console, sending the firm to a loss of 23.2bn yen (£135m) last year.

On Friday Nintendo announced it would cut 130 jobs as part of its decision to close some of its offices in Germany.

This week Microsoft and Sony are attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3, where video games developers go to show off their latest games to nearly 50,000 attendees.

Nintendo will not attend E3 for the second year running as the firm looks to cut costs by unveiling new games via an online video stream instead.